To Inspire:

I’m reading one of Bob Goff’s newest books, Undistracted: Capture Your Purpose, Rediscover Your Joy. Great book, we’ll be featuring it in our next issue of Harvest Magazine. In the chapter entitled, Finish Your Work, Bob shares the importance of seeing things through. It’s an important idea for all of us as we finish well in our current chapters of life and enter and live those next chapters.

Bob shares his own story of recently going up to his attic and finding an old guitar case. Assuming it belonged to one of his grown children, he opened it and discovered a guitar only partially constructed – no fretboard or final touches. And then he remembered; this guitar was one he had begun to build when he was in his 20’s. Not having the necessary skills to construct it by himself, he was building it under the tutelage of a man who owned a guitar repair shop. That was 42 years ago and here it was unfinished. Bob shares that it was not for lack of interest that he didn’t complete it, he simply got “distracted” by other pursuits and never finished it.

Now perhaps in the overall scheme of one’s life, an unfinished guitar is not a big deal. But Bob’s point is that we each have many more things in life that we are not “finishing.” He goes on to share Jesus’s conversation with God the Father shortly before his own passion and death. He says to his heavenly Father, “I have finished the work you gave me to do.” Have you and I finished the “work” that God gave us to do? Or perhaps because that work is challenging or even boring at times, have we left it to pursue other less important things? It’s a good question to reflect on and I encourage you to do so. Bob even poses some specific ideas and instructions:

• Do you have a song yet to be written? Finish your work.
• Do you have a book inside of you but you’ve been deferring the hard work of sitting down and writing? Sit down and start.
• Do you have a strained relationship with a loved one that demands a difficult conversation. Make the call.

Here are some others:

• Do you need more energy to live your best life? Start a fitness routine today.
• Do you have a cause that touches your heart? Sign up today to volunteer.
• Do you have a marriage that needs strengthening? Demonstrate your love for your spouse today.
• Do you wish you were closer to God? Determine to pray daily.

Most of us reading this are close to or in the fourth quarter of our lives. If there is important and unfinished work in your life, determine today that you will not allow distractions or a weak will to lull you into putting it off to the future. Now is the time to act, now is the time to finish the work God has given you.

Live as if time is short – and you’ll live well.

Written by Matt Palmer, Partner & Co-Founder